Stockings
by ScareyQuinette
Summary: Jonathan Crane lies on his desk and reflects on his favourite  and least favourite  intern.


**This is not the best I've ever written, but I hope you like it all the same!**

**Stockings.**

She was already retrieving her clothes by the time Crane came back to the world around them. Unwilling to move too far, he lent his head back on the scarred wood of his desk and ran a hand through his hair; the dew of sweat clinging to him. As his breathing began to slow, Crane lolled his head to the side, watching as she padded across the worn carpet, ever in motion, pulling her shirt on, still half-buttoned.

The electric company must have cut her power again – her stockings didn't match. With her back turned to him, Crane examined the mismatched pair in idleness. The plain black nylon suited her much more, in his opinion; the red heart motif that adorned the top of her right leg conveyed too much of a coy innocence. It was not like her at all.

Finished dressing, she turned to him, hands on hips, with the same frustrated and amused expression he had seen too many times, and then she was gone. Their trysts were always short. The thought of spending hours lying side by side or absconding to some secret place horrified them both in how much formality would be required. If they kept to brief moments caught on the filthy carpet of the asylum offices, they could simply walk away, no cash or emotions wasted.

Tomorrow, she would flounce into the staff's recreational room, smiling her pitying smile on the doctors with their beige suits and grey faces as she waved around the latest batch of praise from her university. They thought she was a psychiatric Goddess; that her way of thinking was so unique and focused. They never suspected that it was Crane's work – the only acknowledgment he got was the occasional email saying how well he must do as a mentor that his intern should be doing so well herself. It sickened Crane to the core every time she began to boast, seeming to believe the achievements were rightly hers – as if she could have been cognizant of the same wonderful nature as he was.

But it wasn't just the grades they traded in their loveless embraces, or Crane would have revealed her for the talentless fraud she was too long ago for anyone to remember her name. Unfortunately for Jonathan Crane, his tiny intern had an enormous supply of curiosity. While most of the other doctors, who simply did their shifts and went home, tossing their memories of the day out of the car window as they sped from the asylum, she had listened to the whispers that snaked through the cell walls like an infection. The name Scarecrow was just a shared delusion from overheard nightmares of other inmates if anyone dare bring up the subject within the asylum, but she would never let her suspicions be explained away so easily. It became harder for Crane to slip into the basement unnoticed when she worked – always dogging his heels, sure he knew more than he let on. If only she had guessed just how much he knew, maybe her sense would have let her curiosity die. Somehow he seriously doubted it.

For weeks, the game of cat and mouse had continued, until Crane believed the blonde had simply tired of playing detective and finally resigned herself to wearing beige and blending into the walls as she shuffled down the hallways – counting the hours until she could leave. Oh, how he had underestimated her. It had been past midnight and the other on-call doctors had taken to the damp-smelling sleeping quarters when Crane slipped from his office, his thin canvas bag held tight. The girl had two days off and would be asleep in her cramped and cold apartment somewhere in the Narrows. Crane was free to peel away his mask and don his true face – the face of the Scarecrow.

The patient was squirming in his restraints when Scarecrow pushed open the heavy door to his laboratory, deep in the supposedly flooded basement. There was not a guard in Arkham that did not take a bribe, and so the subjects were always there, just on time for Scarecrow to begin his work. Peering through the holes in his burlap sack, Scarecrow grinned a maniacal grin, wasted on the man before him. He had smashed the vial of his masterpiece toxin against the table, shards of glass flying into both mens' arms as the vapour stalked its way into the patient's brain. He was breathing fear – it moved within his veins and soured his heart. The screams started almost immediately, and Scarecrow found himself caught in a sea of ecstasy.

It was the sound of the door shutting with a slam that broke the wondrous moment. The weak hand that had struggled to hold it had finally caved at the horror within the room and yet she hadn't moved from behind the other side of the door. She was terrified, as she had due right to be, but she was not so afraid that her intelligence abandoned her. As Crane threw off his mask and threw open the door, she knew as well as he did that he could not kill her. Too many questions would be asked, and to drive her insane with the toxin was out of the question. Psychotic breakdowns never occur in a heartbeat – not in girls like her. She was already damaged and she had already come so far. No one would believe that she would finally lose it now.

The deal had been struck in moments. She left without a glance back at the man still screaming in the lab and the next night Crane had worked on her paper before the click of high heels and the metallic tear of a zip undoing had disrupted him. And so they had continued on, loathing and relying in equal measure.

With a sigh, Jonathan Crane pulled himself up from the desk to re-dress. Maybe one day he would buy her some matching stockings.


End file.
